


the heat that drives the light

by theexistentiallyqueer



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Established Relationship, M/M, akira is a service top, but sometimes something happens and he gets very dominantly horny on main, goro is emotionally constipated and bad with feelings, i finished the first half in time so this doubles as happy valentines day shuake fic, it's a lovely and promising cocktail, vaguely shrike compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:47:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22709473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theexistentiallyqueer/pseuds/theexistentiallyqueer
Summary: Goro can be slippery as a shadow if need be; he lifts up the covers and slides in beside Akira with almost no sound. When you sleep alone there's always that moment of being just in bed with your cold sheets cocooning you where you shiver and you shiver and you freeze, but Akira takes up half the bed and Goro can nestle up against him and let the warmth radiating off of him soak into his bones.How can it be that he lived without this once?Akira, who sees him. Akira, who knows him. Akira, who never fails him. Akira, the one person he's ever--The first time Akira said I love you, Goro tried to flee.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 12
Kudos: 334





	the heat that drives the light

**Author's Note:**

> This all came from a conversation with Corvus (impropercorvus on Tumblr & Twitter) about the first time Akira and Goro would say "I love you." Various headcanons abounded and ideas happened and now there is this.
> 
> I didn't mean for this to be a two-part fic but apparently it is. The next chapter is definitely going to be explicit. As always, I beta nothing before I post it and edit afterwards to fix anything that sucks.

Goro manages to leave just in time to catch the last train, which is fortunate. He's checked and re-checked their budget for the month and scraping together the money for a cab ride this late would be a headache. He'd have to dip into their pool of non-necessity funds, and Akira is so very insistent that they set aside an arbitrary amount each month for what he calls "fun money."

"People can't survive on just rice and water," he'd said, silencing Goro with a finger to his lips. Goro had jerked away, offended at being shushed like a child, but that only made Akira smile. "Trust me. The soul needs feeding too."

It's not that he's wrong, or that Goro doesn't understand where he's coming from, but it's--a lot. Akira didn't wake up at twenty-two and finally, suddenly, find a purpose for living, which brings with it the expectation of planning for a future. If Goro is going to die of old age he's going to die comfortably, retired in a two-story house in a respectable neighborhood, lying in a bed with sheets made of Egyptian cotton. Goro has three active subscriptions to different mailing lists offering advice to gen z new adults on financial planning, all of which warn: retirement, in this economy? Prepare to fucking work.

But he does appreciate it. There are the little ways Akira reminds him that they're not cogs in a human machine with homemade meals, breakfast in bed, nights out to the movies, the jazz bar, rapid-fire billiards contests, dinner at a restaurant instead of the beef bowl shop, somewhere just out of their price range so that it could feel like a necktie affair. They're dates, though Akira never calls them dates, because Akira knows the word _date_ is one of a list of twenty that makes Goro feel like he needs to run for shelter. They get their quiet moments, and Goro can leave class or work at the end of a too-long day looking forward to unwinding in whatever way Akira has slotted into their schedule.

Post-graduate work has so far lived up to its demands. Between mentoring and assisting in lower level classes and studying and preparing for his thesis, he's been leaving later and later and later. His only respite is home, the cheap studio he and Akira signed for less than a year ago, where Goro can be verbally abused by a talking cat and pulled into a warm embrace by the one single only person who's ever made Goro feel like he could relax in his hold.

The last train he catches echoes with the sounds of silence, the gentle jangling of the handrails. His only companion is a drunk in the far corner who will no doubt be shortly evicted to sleep his night through in a park or an empty stairwell.

What he needs is companionship. What he needs is to not set his place and feel so alone, so alone. What he needs is the feeling of Akira's body sleeping alongside his.

If you had told him when he was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, that he would have a home again and that his home would be the fit of another person's body against his, he would have called you a fool. Now he sits on an empty train feeling achingly empty in the want of a hand in his. Asinine, he might have thought in his younger days, but the younger him didn't know what it felt like to hold a hand, bare palm against bare palm.

The more time passes the more Goro finds himself turning into one of those people comfortable being part of someone else's social media landmark. First kiss, first date. First relationship, first love. First partner. First always. First forever. He has an Instagram account again just to like the pictures Akira posts of them.

The train coasts to a smooth stop at his station. Goro stands and adjusts his coat. As he's passing the dozing homeless man, he stops and leaves a ¥500 coin on the seat beside his outstretched hand.

That was Goro, once. He can pass the kindness along, even if it's harder than passing on the fury.

The apartment is dark and quiet when he reaches home. He tries to find his way through the entryway and nearly trips over Morgana, who meets him at the door with tail raised. "You're late!" the cat says quietly, lashing his tail around Goro's leg like a rope.

"Some of us have lives to live," Goro replies icily. "Do you pay rent? No. Be quiet."

"Te _tchy_." Morgana turns away from Goro, sticking his nose in the air. "I could have eaten your share of dinner, you know, but I didn't. There's leftovers for you in the fridge."

"Brat," Goro mutters, earning him a swipe of claws at his ankle; he resists the impulse to kick out in response. He doesn't hate Morgana, and Akira is fond of him.

There's a covered plate in the fridge, a sticky note stuck to the cling wrap. _Honey, you're home_ , it says in Akira's fine, looping script. Goro smiles despite himself as he reads it and sticks it to the fridge door. It's not that he's a sap, but it will make Akira smile to see that he kept it instead of throwing it away.

He eats his dinner cold, more out of long ingrained habit than anything, then washes the dishes and sets them in the rack to dry. After, he flicks the kitchen lights off and pads quietly down the hall to the bathroom. He's never quite managed to shake some habits but tonight he doesn't want to deal with the full skincare routine. Tomorrow's a Saturday--no class, no work. He can exfoliate and mask then. Instead he just washes his face, tends to the annoying swollen red spot on his hairline, and applies cream to the bags under his eyes, though he doesn't know why he bothers. The pimple will dry out, but there's nothing to be done for his dark circles other than taking a month off from school and work to do nothing but sleep. Which would be great, but also he'd hate it. He'd hate missing out on everything for a month.

Somehow, he thinks as he presses a clean towel to his face, at some point he turned into the kind of person who genuinely wants to be involved with the wide stupid world.

The bedroom is brighter than it should be this time of night. Akira likes to keep the large street-facing window cracked open, better for Morgana to come and go. Moonlight flickers through the window with the wind-sweeping dance of the shades, catching its mons Huygens and Hadley and casting their valleys in shadow. It gives Goro enough light to see by that he can make his way softly from the door to the bed, where Akira is already asleep.

Goro can be silent and slippery as a shadow if need be; he lifts up the covers and slides in beside Akira with almost no sound. When you sleep alone there's always that moment of being just in bed with your cold sheets cocooning you where you shiver and you shiver and you freeze, but Akira takes up half the bed and Goro can nestle up against him and let the warmth radiating off of him soak into his bones.

How can it be that he lived without this once?

Akira, who sees him. Akira, who knows him. Akira, who never fails him. Akira, the one person he's ever--

The first time Akira said I love you, Goro tried to flee.

Three little words can set a person off so easily if they're not ready for them. Want he could understand, need he could understand, but love--?

The last person who ever loved Goro was a corpse now.

It happened like this:

_Akira looks so good pinned beneath him, and he looks better yet come undone. There's something bright in his eyes, something bright and hot, that Goro's seen flashing before. He likes the way seeing it feels, the way it makes something hot and heavy tremble in his belly._

_"Goro," Akira says, and then, "Go--Goro--," his voice breaking between syllables makes Goro's cock, trapped against his abdomen by the uncomfortable confines of his pants, throb. What Goro needs is to make him cry out, but that's laughably easy: what Goro really needs is to hear Akira say his name in prayer, over and over and over, and that's easier still. Akira should be embarrassed that he's this easy to pick to pieces and disassemble._

_"_ Goro _," Akira says, his arms curled over the back of Goro's neck, pulling him in as Goro works him in steady measured strokes. "Goro, I'm--I can't--Goro--I--Goro, I love--I love you--"_

_The words are like a canon shot; Goro jerks his body away._

He'd been afraid. He'd been petrified. He'd tried to run and Akira, Akira, Akira had miraculously held him fast and pulled him back in

_"I won't say it," Akira promises. Four small words but they feel like the hard thrust of a knife. "I won't say it if it makes you uncomfortable."_

_"Don't you dare." Goro's voice is a growl for all that he's hunched in on himself, made smaller beneath the gentle cage of Akira's arms. "Don't you dare. That would be like lying, and I won't ever tolerate you lying to me."_

_"Okay," Akira says. He pulls Goro bodily against him, his arms curved around the small of Goro's back. "Okay. I love you. Goro. I love you. I won't stop saying it until we both die."_

_"Idiot," Goro says, wrapping his arms around Akira's bare chest in turn. "Don't make promises you can't keep."_

_Akira smiles and kisses the top of his forehead. "This is one I always will."_

Akira is warm against his chest, a physical landmark he can curl his body around. How is it that their contours fit so perfectly against one another's? He leans himself into the planes of Akira's body, planes that line up against his own. It's sacred geometry, or something else like it.

He nestles his face against the back of Akira's head, where his curls brush against his nose and tickle him, promising sneezes. Goro doesn't deserve this; Goro is the luckiest man in the world.

"I love you," he mumbles into the warm skin of Akira's neck as he drifts off to sleep.

He doesn't realize that Akira is awake as he says it.


End file.
